Chapter Seven
We eat as the sun descends. Linguini with clams and garlic oil, roasted eggplant, salad with shallot vinaigrette and heirloom tomatoes with the soft burrata from the top shelf.
The house has an open dining room that spills out onto the deck, and we keep the doors open throughout dinner, hearing the waves crash.
“I love this salad dressing,” Marcella says.
“It’s the herbs,” Sylvia says, wrapping another bite on her fork. “They make the dish.”
Marcella is the one who tends the herb garden out front, and I take Sylvia’s comment as an out-of-character compliment—I wonder if my mother does, too.
It still surprises me, sometimes, how different the three of us are.
How even after all this time, even after everything we share—blood, this gift, a genetic lineage, this home—my mother and grandmother remain somewhat of a mystery to me.
“Are you going to stay the weekend?” my dad asks.
“I hadn’t decided yet,” I say. “Leo isn’t back until tomorrow night. I left Pea enough food for it, though.”
“You’ll stay,” Sylvia says. “Tai chi meets here tomorrow night.”
“I’ve never seen so many people drink wine at a tai chi night,” my dad says.
“It’s good for the vibes,” Sylvia says.
“You really shouldn’t do too many one-leg balances,” my mother says, and at that Sylvia changes the subject.
Afterward my parents and I clean up and Sylvia retires to her back house.
“See you in the morning,” she says. “But not too early! Don’t go banging on my door until it’s time for a mimosa.”
She’s always slept late. When I was a child and she still lived upstairs, I remember I was allowed to knock on Sylvia’s door only after 9:00 a.m. I’d crawl into bed with her, and we’d watch Live with Kelly or The View.
“All these women do is talk over each other,” she’d say, but she watched anyway. We’d share her coffee, me sneaking sips and Sylvia pretending not to notice until the cup ran cold or it was empty.
I dry out the orange Le Creuset pot and store it under the stove. My mom has already gone up, and it’s just me and Dad left in the kitchen.
“Tea or another glass?” he asks me.
I slide the bottle of cab across the table to him, and he pours for us.
“Good choice.”
Without saying anything, we take our glasses outside. We settle into sun chairs on the deck, side by side. The breeze off the ocean is almost cold now. I pull over my head a stray sweatshirt that’s been discarded by someone—probably Dad—earlier today.
Dad takes a sip. “I don’t know if I should be flattered or worried that my thirty-seven-year-old daughter still can’t spend a night alone.”
I exhale out a laugh. “I can. I think. I mean, I could.”
“Yes, very convincing.”
Before I met Leo, spending the night alone in the bungalow was habit, routine.
But since I’ve been with him, any time I’m alone there I start to feel like I’m on high alert.
What if an intruder comes in? What if that earthquake finally hits and we can’t find each other?
Being tethered to someone ups the survival stakes.
“I ran into Stone today.”
Dad just looks at me, raises his eyebrows slightly, waiting for me to continue.
“I guess Bonnie isn’t doing so good. Mom never mentioned it.”
Dad nods. “You’re busy, honey,” he says. “She doesn’t want to bother you. You’re not always easy for her to get on the phone.” Then: “How was seeing him?”
I think about it. “Fine,” I say. “Strange. I think the last time I saw him was five years ago.”
“Before Leo.”
I nod.
“He’s a nice guy,” Dad says carefully. “But he wasn’t the one for you.”
“Is that what he is?” I say. “Nice?”
Dad laughs lightly, and I feel us exhale into the space between us, the ease that has just always been there.
Dad was the one who I could go to, the one who wouldn’t punish me if I screwed up on an exam, or stole a vodka bottle from the liquor cabinet.
Dad was always able to see the context in whatever I had done.
He was never hard-lined, always inquisitive.
He was the first person I told after Stone and I had sex for the very first time.
“It’s better to think of old loves as nice,” he says. “Keeps you out of the muck. If someone is an asshole, well—that’s fire. Fire is alive, you get me?”
I do. Stone was never an asshole. But then again, nice is not how I’d describe our relationship, not exactly.
“Things work out,” I say. “I’d never have Leo.”
“That’s right.”
I look out over the water. The seafoam appears iridescent against the black sky. It feels like we are both waiting for me to say it, and so I do.
“But Stone was there, you know?”
He witnessed our history. He was there for so much of my becoming.
Dad knows about his car accident. My mother told him.
I don’t know how the conversation went, because I wasn’t there—I just know that one day my mother and Sylvia and I had a secret, and the next all four of us did.
My father, by all accounts, believed her immediately.
Not just because he loves her—although I suspected that was most of it—but because, as he put it, it seemed to explain a lot about her nature, why she had become so drawn and anxious.
It connected them more deeply, deeper than they had been before. I’ve heard only children sometimes say that they feel a part of their parents’ marriage. That there is no “us” and “them” but instead just “we.” That there is no separation between a marriage and a family when there is only one child.
But I always felt like a little bit of an outsider to my parents’ marriage.
I suspected my dad was my mom’s priority, and I didn’t resent it, exactly, but I didn’t like it, either.
And after the accident it went from suspected to obvious.
To fact. My mom orbited around him—the man she loved, the man she had saved, the man she’d do anything to protect. And so I started to protect him, too.
I hear my phone ringing, a soft hum from inside. It jolts me out of the moment.
“Go,” Dad says. “I’ll close up.”
I kiss him on the cheek and head inside. Leo is calling.
“Baby!” he says. His voice rings through the phone loud and clear and happy. “How’s it going out there?”
“Good. Dad and I are just having some wine outside. How are you?”
I toss some paisley pillows on the floor and sink down into the old leather couch.
“What did Sylvia make?” he asks.
“Pasta,” I say. “Among other things.”
“Shabbat spaghetti?” His voice gets farther away and then comes back again.
I hear a door slam.
“Save me some of those leftovers.”
Dad turns around and waves through the glass. I wave back and mouth Leo to him. He gives me a thumbs-up.
“So tell me how it went,” I say into the phone.
“Wait, hang on. Just gotta—”
Leo is a terrible multitasker. If I ask him a question while he’s chopping an onion, I have to repeat myself three times.
I hear the front door rattle. My heart thumps, and I took toward the deck—Where is my dad? Is this an intruder?—but then the door swings open and there is Leo.
He has a backpack on his shoulders that he slides off as soon as he gets inside.
“You’re here!”
I toss my cell on the couch and throw my arms around his neck. I feel his hands press into my back, holding me firmly to him. I breathe in his Leo scent—comforting, like an old bookstore. My heartbeat slows.
“You’re here!” I say again. “Why are you here?”
Leo releases me and nods to my dad, who has just come inside. “Sorry to interrupt.”
Dad pats him on the shoulder. “Not at all,” he says. “Glad you’re back. I’m gonna go to bed. I’ll see you two tomorrow.”
He kisses me on the side of my head and then carries on up the stairs, leaving us alone. I take Leo’s hand and lead him down onto the couch.
“When did you leave?” I say at the same time he says: “I got the job.”
I see the smile on his face—the slow spread of it. My eyes go wide.
“Babe. That’s amazing.” I put my hands on either side of his face. “I’m so proud of you.”
He leans his forehead down to touch mine, then pulls his head back up.
“So, listen,” he says. He takes my hands off his face and holds them in his lap.
“The shoot starts soon. Really soon. I have to be there for prep next week.” He looks at me, trying to read how I feel about this.
I’m happy for him, and I know he—we—need this.
But I’m also aware of how Leo is long-distance. And what this means for our family.
“I guess we’ll take a break from the clinic for the summer? We can’t afford it now anyway.” I feel a ruffle of irritation from Leo.
“I actually had an idea, not sure if you’ll hate it,” he says.
I shouldn’t have brought up the clinic, but it’s the first thing that comes to mind. “OK.”
“I was thinking maybe you’d come out to the beach for the summer. You can work remote, and your parents will love it, you won’t be alone, and you can come to New York for a few weeks.” He pauses, let’s go of my hands. “The extra money might be really nice.”
I know it bothers Leo that we don’t have more. And it always hurts me when I see him up at night, hunched over his computer, like he can will the funds into our bank account from out of his fingers.
“What extra money?”
Leo gets sheepish. He closes one eye and looks at me. “I thought we could Airbnb out West Hollywood?”
I don’t say anything, and he jumps in with more.
“We’d find great tenants, obviously. I figure I’ll give it a deep clean, maybe patch up some paint spots. It’s a good excuse to fix some things.”
We’ve been talking about those renovations for two years, and we’ve never done a thing about them. It would be worth it to rent for that possibility alone.
“You’ve really been thinking about this.”
Leo shrugs. “It’s just an idea. It would help.”
The thought of a stranger sleeping in our bed is instantly terrible, but then a moment later, fine.
“I like it,” I say.
Leo’s eyes brighten. “Really? Honestly we could probably make five grand.”
“Two months? More than that.”
He smiles at me. “My little optimist.”
I bend my face up to kiss his lips. “I’ll talk to my parents and Sylvia about it tomorrow. It would be nice to have some time with her.”
Leo’s hands find my low back. “You’re amazing,” he says. “Best wife ever.” He starts to kiss me slowly, edging me back down against the sofa. “And I love you.” He puts a hand against my rib cage, then moves it upward. “And I love your boobs.”
They used to be a solid B cup, but since all the fertility treatments they hover at about a C+. I don’t hate them, either.
Leo starts to tug at the hem of my shirt, trying to hike it up my torso. His fingers are impatient.
“Babe,” I say. “We can’t do it here.”
Leo bends his face down to kiss the place where my neck and shoulder meet. “Oh, but we are.”
I pull him toward me. I feel his hair—slightly greasy from the plane—and the stubble on his chin.
I’m sure we have, I’m sure it hasn’t been that long, but I’m struggling to remember the last time we had sex just because we wanted to.
Not because I was ovulating or we were trying to top off an IUI or we were decimating from a failed retrieval.
Sex has become, in a way, both an obligation and a rebellion.
Leo pauses.
“Are you OK?” he asks me. He can tell I’ve gone somewhere else.
I blink up at him. “I’m still waiting on the clinic,” I say. “I mean, I know it didn’t work.”
I feel Leo immediately retract. “Jesus,” he says.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Just say it.”
He sits up abruptly. I feel his hands leave my body.
“We said we wouldn’t let this dictate our lives anymore.”
“No, you said that,” I say. I pull my arms around my chest.
“That’s bullshit,” he says. “You don’t even believe it’s worth it anymore. We know our odds, Laur. You just said it.”
“Keep your voice down,” I say, although he isn’t yelling, not even a little bit.
“I’m so sick of pretending this is going to work out.”
He sits back on the couch. He puts a hand over his mouth and exhales out through it. I feel my eyes sting up with tears.
“We can’t control it,” I say. “That’s the point.”
Next to me, he closes his eyes. “Yes, we can,” he says. His head falls into his hands when he says what he does next. “We can just stop.”
I feel my body grow cold. It’s not the first time he’s expressed this sentiment, not exactly, but it’s the first time he’s used those words this bluntly.
“I don’t think it’s fair that you’re the only one who gets to choose,” he says.
But I’m not choosing. That’s what he doesn’t understand. I have no choice. If I did, we wouldn’t be here.
“Come on,” he says. “Let’s go to bed.”
I don’t want him to touch me. I don’t even want to be near him. I feel betrayed. More than that, my body does. Because I’m the one who has to deal with the shots and the appointments and the saline tests that snake catheters up my cervix. Whose life is this dictating, exactly?
But I don’t say anything. Instead, I let him lead me off the couch. I see our reflections in the glass window, two shadows backlit by the sea.